The Alien Work of God

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I were resting and flipping through the channels. We finally decided to stop and catch the tail end of the movie Men in Black which was wrapping up on TBS. If you haven't seen the MIB movies, the premise is that aliens exist, creatures from other planets and galaxies, and that there is a bureau of FBI-like agents (the "men in black") who work to protect earth by cooperating with the friendly aliens and bringing the more malicious ones to justice.

In Isaiah 28, God does some "alien" work as well - however, it has nothing to do with creatures "out there." He performs his "alien work" on His own people. This gets to the nature of who God is. God loves to show mercy and compassion to His people. He loves to save and to set free. But being the loving Father that He is, He also is willing to discipline His children and work to rid their lives of the evil that corrupts from within. In Lutheran circles, we talk about God working through both Gospel and Law. The Lutheran Study Bible quotes the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article XII, 52-53) as it describes God's working in the lives of His people:

[Isaiah] calls it the 'strange' work of the Lord when He terrifies, because to make alive and comfort is God's own proper work. But He terrifies, Isaiah says, for this reason - that there may be a place for comfort and making alive. For hearts that are secure and do not feel God's wrath hate consolation. In this manner Scripture is accustomed to join these two, the terrors and the consolation... Into these two works all Scripture has been distributed. The one part is the Law, which shows, reproves, and condemns sins. The other part is the Gospel, that is, the promise of grace bestowed in Christ.

We give thanks to God for His proper work, His gift of the Gospel message in our lives. But we also praise God for growing and refining us through His alien work of the Law, judging and condemning our sin through the cross of Christ so that it cannot live to destroy us. God threshes for a while (Isaiah 28:23-29), but not forever. There is a time to bring together and make whole again.

Is Resurrection found in the Old Testament?

Happy New Year, everyone!

"Is resurrection found in the Old Testament?" This was an insightful question asked by someone in this past week's Wednesday evening Bible Study on the Gospel of Matthew. We were in Chapter 22, where Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees with the story problem of the woman who marries seven brothers this side of heaven. We talked about the fact (which Matthew points out in the text) that the Sadducees did not believe in a resurrection of the dead, though the Pharisees did. This got our class to thinking about resurrection as it is taught in the Old Testament. The drafters of the Nicene Creed certainly believed that the Old Testament taught that the Messiah would rise from the dead: "And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures..." Jesus himself revealed to a pair of disciples on the road to Emmaus that the Scriptures had foretold his death and resurrection: "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"

This question was fresh in my mind as I was reading through Isaiah 25 and 26 the other day. Isaiah is looking forward to the day of God's salvation. That day is often pictured in the Old Testament as all people streaming to the "mountain of the Lord," the place where God is present. Isaiah 25:7-8 reads, "On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever..."

I found this image to be very vivid - death as a covering or shroud that enfolds all people. We can't get away from it... we can't get out from underneath it. It swallows us all up.

But one has come through death. He has destroyed the shroud of death by leaving his own shroud behind in the grave. The grave which swallows us all has itself been swallowed up in victory; "its sting is lost forever," as Martin Luther says in his Easter hymn. And because this One has already defeated death, we can be confident that the day will come when we too will toss aside the shroud and come forth from the earth, alive forever in Him. Easter transforms everything!

In the comments, let me know what your favorite Old Testament resurrection promise is...